When I mentioned I was writing a book titled ‘Brand with Patents,’ most people looked bewildered. Patent professionals asked, ‘Branding?’ while branding experts reacted with, ‘Patents do branding?’ The responses universally conveyed a lack of understanding.
‘Patents,’ which protect technology, and ‘branding,’ a marketing tool, seem truly worlds apart. In university terms, they’re like engineering and business administration – so distant they might not share a single common course. Even within a company, the R&D department and the marketing department likely have no collaborative work and might even be unaware of each other’s existence.
And yet, these two seemingly unrelated fields actually have a common thread, at least in small companies.
Having worked in patents for a long time, I eventually realized that patent law doesn’t exist solely to protect inventors.
Patent law exists for ‘industrial development.’ Protecting inventors is merely a means to achieve that end.
That’s why, when granting rights, the system is demanding and strict, requiring novelty and inventive step compared to all inventions disclosed worldwide. And even after obtaining a hard-won patent, exercising those rights often proves difficult for various reasons.
Having granted patent rights in exchange for technology disclosure, the system extinguishes these rights if annual maintenance fees (annuities) aren’t paid, falling short of guaranteeing the full 20-year term. While annuities are modest in the first few years, they can amount to millions of won annually after 10 years, depending on the number of claims.
Even then, if there are errors in the claim structure or wording, the painstakingly secured patent rights can be invalidated entirely on the grounds of improper disclosure.
Why is it so demanding?
This is because the focus of patent law is more on ‘disclosure’ than ‘protection.’ By compelling companies to disclose their technology in detail in return for strong protection, it encourages other companies to improve upon it and invent further, thereby fostering the overall development of the related industry. This is the direction pursued by patent law.
Thus, by not easily granting patent rights, instead providing strong exclusive rights, and requiring very detailed technology disclosure, the patent system itself naturally upgrades products and enhances corporate value, in two ways.
First, because patents guarantee strong protection, companies naturally strive not just to develop new technology, but to secure technology robust enough for registration.
Securing patent rights grants exclusive use of the technology for a certain period, allowing companies to block competitors’ market entry and curb imitation products for a significant time. Nowadays, producing a product with technology for which patent rights haven’t been secured is akin to telling competitors they are free to copy it. Therefore, even small companies aspire to register patents whenever possible.
However, with the patent system being nearly a century old, almost every conceivable idea has been attempted as a patent at least once. Many have been filed and rejected, or already registered. Countless ideas, even those never realized as actual products, have been disclosed or registered. Moreover, the standard for judging the inventive step of a patent considers technology disclosed not just domestically, but worldwide.
Consequently, in the process of securing novelty and inventive step for patent registration, products and technology inevitably improve. This, of course, is what patent law intends.
Second, because securing patent rights is not easy, companies holding many patents are recognized as ‘technologically capable companies.’ They are also perceived as ‘companies worth investing in.’
A company is, in reality, an intangible entity. It’s something created by the gathering of representatives and employees, but its members constantly change. How, then, is a company’s identity secured, and what do investors look at when deciding to invest?
Ultimately, a company’s ‘assets’ and ‘future value’ determine its identity and worth. Here, ‘future value’ boils down to a competitive business model and technological capability – which can essentially be represented by patents.
This process of enhancing product competitiveness and corporate value through patents is not dissimilar to branding, which builds up a brand. Good branding is based on ‘authenticity,’ stemming from the inherent competitiveness of the product and company.
This is possible when patents become an element of this inherent competitiveness. Patents are an excellent means of securing the brand authenticity of products and companies.
This book consists of three chapters.
Chapter 1 serves as a starter for those unfamiliar with patent terminology and systems.
First, we look at some terms specific to the patent industry. Like any field, the patent world has unique jargon not commonly used elsewhere. Upon closer examination, seemingly complex terms often turn out to be simple, but their unfamiliarity can create an impression of difficulty. We begin by covering frequently used terms in the actual industry.
If you’re already familiar with them or find them difficult due to unfamiliarity, feel free to skip this section for now and revisit it later.
Next, we cover how to read patent specifications. While the structure of a patent specification is unique, it’s not prohibitively difficult. With a little technique, anyone can learn to read them easily. Knowing how to read specifications allows you to utilize disclosed patents for technological improvement, and to assess whether registered patents truly align with the company’s value.
Finally, we review the most fundamental aspects of patents: the requirements for patent registration (patentability) and the implications for patent branding derived from them.
Chapters 2 and 3 delve into how patents can be used to enhance the value of products and companies in detail. Chapter 2 focuses primarily on the internal aspects of patent branding – specifically, how to improve product competitiveness itself. Chapter 3 deals with the external aspects – how patents can contribute to the external or perceived value of the company.
Chapter 2, in particular, uses a hypothetical case study to explore the process of searching and selecting disclosed patents to internally enrich and develop technology or products currently in the conceptual stage. It addresses how to secure patents with substantial content, which can be seen as the process of acquiring product authenticity. This is the part I want to emphasize most in this book.
The process of refining a business model through patents might feel unfamiliar and you might wonder if companies actually operate this way. However, many recently founded companies genuinely conceive and refine their business plans in this manner, then strategically file patents before launching. It’s simply applying the label ‘patent branding’ to a method already in common use.
Now, let’s begin exploring this ‘patent branding’ that others are already successfully implementing – how exactly is it done?